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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

• Regenerative agriculture practices make soil healthier and increase their carbon storage capacity.
• These practices improve nutrient cycling efficiency, particularly nitrogen, which reduces dependence on synthetic fertilizers. As a result, they also help lower nitrous oxide emissions, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential nearly 300 times greater than carbon dioxide.
• Additionally, regenerative agriculture practices lead to improvements in drought resilience, crop productivity, soil moisture retention, biodiversity, and agroecosystem health.

Key Strategies

• Cropland Management: A package of specific management practices including planting cover crops, strip cropping, switching from conventional tillage to reduced tillage or no till, and conservation crop rotation.
• Grazing Land Management: A package of specific management practices including prescribed grazing, range planting and silvopasture establishment.
• Biosolids: Application of biosolids, or treated residuals from the wastewater treatment process, as fertilizer to agricultural lands.
• Mulching: Spreading organic materials, such as shredded wood, straw, or other similar materials, on top of soil.
• Compost Application: Using organic matter derived from the remains of composting plant, animal and waste material as fertilizer.

What is the City doing to make progress on this indicator?

The City does not currently have any initiatives that work to increase the utilization of regenerative agriculture practices on San Jose’s natural and working lands. However, the City will explore opportunities to engage with landowners and other relevant stakeholders in the future. The City is also supportive of County and other local efforts to increase the utilization of regenerative agriculture and shares known funding opportunities with relevant stakeholders.

ABOUT THE DATA

Sources

Data on new acres of land utilizing regenerative agriculture practices are provided by local and regional agencies that lead and monitor relevant efforts. Agencies consulted for data collection included San José’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department, Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, Santa Clara County Cooperative Extension, and Santa Clara County Valley Water District.

The following regenerative agriculture practices are considered for this metric: cropland management, grazing land management, biosolids application (on croplands and grazing lands), compost application (on croplands and grazing lands), and mulching application (on croplands and grazing lands).

“New” acreage is defined as any land that started utilizing regenerative agriculture practices after 2021, when San José’s NWL Element was developed.

You can view more details on this metric and the criteria for each applicable practice in the linked NWL Element.

Limitations

There isn't a comprehensive nor consistent source of data on regenerative agriculture projects in San Jose. Because of this, there are most likely projects that have not been captured in the reported data. In addition to annual consultation with the above listed agencies, Staff continue to look for additional sources of data to fill in any blanks.

Last updated

November 2025